E-mail is in the future of seven more schools at the University this fall. The Small Schools subcommittee of the University's E-Mail Task Force finalized plans yesterday to implement Elm e-mail systems for students in the schools of Dental Medicine, Education, Fine Arts, Law, Nursing, Social Work and Veterinary Medicine. Students in the Annenberg School, Engineering, the School of Arts and Sciences, Medical School, and Wharton School already have access to e-mail. E-mail Task Force Co-chairperson Michael Eleey said accounts will be made available "with no charge for students, through special funding made available by the Provost." Subcommittee Chairperson Alfred D'Souza said all the necessary software is now in place for students to use e-mail, but distribution of accounts will not begin until October. According to D'Souza, students in each of the graduate schools will be trained to help other students use their e-mail accounts. Using student trainers is "cheaper, and support is minimal," D'Souza said. Schools will be responsible for the support and training on their e-mail systems, although the University's department of Data Communications and Computing Services will assist them initially. Allison Squires, a Nursing junior, said the school began a pilot program last spring offering free accounts to interested students. The only student who attended the Small Schools subcommittee meetings, Squires said, "I wish they had included more students on it." Squires said she was able to offer a student's perspective on "what needed to be taught at the trainers' camp, what students used the most and what questions they asked." Eleey said students were not included because funding became available in June, when most students were not on campus. The School of Social Work, with just 350 students, will be the slowest to implement the new e-mail accounts. D'Souza said that the school has the smallest amount of computer infrastructure and funding on campus. "We haven't had a person dealing with computers yet – we don't even charge a tech fee," said Dolores Bristow, the school's administrative financial officer. Bristow said that DCCS plans to set aside 50 accounts at a time to the School of Social Work, but added that "support is still up in the air." Ironically, the move to give University students e-mail means in some cases students will have accounts before their professors do. "This is still one open issue," said Daniel Updegrove, the associate vice provost for information systems and computing. "Student access is easier than faculty's... especially in the schools that aren't implementing universal faculty e-mail yet." "I think faculty and staff will come in right after the students who were looking for it," said Charles Canby, the Dental School's representative on the Small Schools subcommittee.
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